BAIC has little in-house experience with plug-in electric cars, and while electrics are still not selling to cost-conscious Chinese car buyers in any appreciable numbers yet, BAIC sees the writing on the wall.

A BAIC executive said recently that the company would introduce an electric car that would compete with the Tesla Model S in 2015.

That prospect seems like something of a stretch.

Even BYD, which has five years' experience building plug-in vehicles of various sorts, has not yet been able to build a vehicle that could be certified for sale in North America and meet U.S. customer expectations for quality, performance, and safety.

According to the report, BAIC is interested not in the Fisker Karma range-extended electric luxury sedan--of which 2,000 or more were built before production halted a year ago--but Fisker's next model, the smaller Atlantic sport sedan.